


Dearer Than Eyesight

by alexygalaxy



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Short & Sweet, f in chat for all the f bombs, once again rated teen for beau's potty mouth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:21:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24779056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexygalaxy/pseuds/alexygalaxy
Summary: Jester and Beau get separated during a battle, and Beau finds arcane help in an oddly familiar place while trying to get back to her.orwhat if you got so worried about me that you awakened your vestige of divergence ... and we were both girls :O
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett
Kudos: 123





	Dearer Than Eyesight

**Author's Note:**

> "Vestiges of Divergence: Danoth's Visor. These mithrail-frame goggles with clear diamond lenses were used by evoker Danoth Oro to spot invisible enemies and scout from afar. "
> 
> "Awakened: As a bonus action, you can speak a command word and use the goggles to see into and through solid matter. This vision has a radius of 60 feet and lasts for one minute. To you, solid objects within that radius appear transparent. The vision can penetrate 1 foot of stone, 1 inch of common metal, or up to 3 feet of wood or dirt. Thicker substances block the vision, as does a thin sheet of lead. This property can't be used again until the next dawn."
> 
> "... a Vestige of Divergence might evolve on its own during moments of duress or desperation for its wielder, granting additional aid in times of need."
> 
> "A Vestige of Divergence typically remains dormant until its wielder achieves 9th level. It becomes awakened between levels 9 and 15..."   
> \- Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, pages 270-271.
> 
> Like, I know Beau's night vision goggles aren't these, but also. Think about it.

Beau can’t fucking see. 

She wakes up, or at least she’s pretty sure she wakes up, she can’t tell for sure, because she  _ can’t fucking see. _

She slaps the ground around her, in that aimless way people do when they find themselves somewhere unfamiliar. It’s cold. Stone. Kinda slimy. She catches the edge of her staff, scrabbles it towards her, and uses it to pry herself to standing. Her knee nearly gives out as she does, and she’s beginning to recall what exactly it was she woke up from.

They're trying to get some ancient artifact that helped seal the Chained Oblivion in the abyss, end up having to break into a nearly-buried ruins of a temple, place is full of traps, wander into a fucked up maze room, find out they’re being followed by Tharizdun cultists, split into groups to try and throw them off the scent, she and Jester purposefully try to get the cultists lost, get cornered in a dead end, fight ensues, now we’re here. 

“Jes?” she calls, voice croaking from the aftermath of battle more than she was expecting.

No answer.

“Jes?!” she says again, raising the volume in case she’s further away.

Silence.

“Jester!” She’s yelling now, ignoring the burn in her throat and the scream of muscles in her back and legs as she begins to stumble around, searching.

Nothing.

Shit, gods damn it, fuck, shit, balls. What’s the last thing she can remember? Fight, fight ... what happened?

There were three cultists, versus two of them. Manageable, but still rough. The cultists were all casters. Backed down into a dead end hallway, they used some spell, she’d never seen it before. Everything went black and cold, and she felt about as close to death as she’d felt underneath that church in Rexxentrum. Jester fell out of her animal form. Another spell.

That’s where her memory cuts out. 

Now, she feels trashed for sure, but not on the brink of unconsciousness. She doesn’t think she got knocked out. She knows there’s magic to put people to sleep, if they’re weak enough. 

So.  _ She _ got put to sleep. Maybe Jester did too, and she’s maybe still passed out?

Beau slaps at her neck, feeling for the goggles. Insane that they haven’t broken, after all the times she’s fallen unceremoniously to the ground with them on. She tugs them up, catches them on her cheek and nose since she’s only using one hand. The other’s gripping the staff to keep her upright. 

She sighs in relief as her eyes adjust to her new, grey-scale sight. She's able to make out the crumbling stone floor, and the walls that stretch to the ceiling at all sides. She turns in a circle, pivoting around her staff searching the ground for bodies.

She seems to be completely alone. No alive cultists guarding her, which is a relief. But no dead ones either, which is disappointment. And no Jester, which is a serious worry. 

She doesn’t think Jester would have just run off without trying to wake Beau up, but maybe the fight carried somewhere else? Maybe sound doesn’t carry well in here, and they’ll be just around a few corners? Maybe Beau’s only been out for a couple seconds, and she’ll be able to catch up and rush in when the cultists are weak? 

As she hobbles down the hallway, staff clacking against the stone every other step, trying to convince herself that Jester’s fine, something catches her eye. Her stomach turns.

There’s a little statuette on the ground, in several pieces. Pressure cracks. Looks like it got stepped on. She doesn’t want to pick it up, because if it’s what she thinks it is, things are really,  _ really _ bad. 

She picks it up.

It’s the Traveller. A sculpture of him, made from clay. His cloak looks like a dick. He should be sitting in Jester’s pocket right now, a little inside one on her cloak, where she always keeps a few on hand just in case she wants to leave it as a monument. This isn’t the kind of place he’d want a monument. It must’ve fallen out of Jester’s cloak. But she’s never dropped one while running before, which means she probably wasn’t running when this one fell.

She doesn’t want to think it, but she does. Jester might’ve been getting dragged. Three casters was a lot to fight off, even as powerful as she is, after making their way through the trap bazaar that’s been this temple. They might’ve just grabbed her. Weird angle of torso to ground would’ve let the statue slip out. Stepped on by a cultist walking behind. It tracks, as much as she wishes it didn’t.

It fucking happened again, she thinks through the pain of speeding up her movement, steps pulling her around several corners with fearful urgency. Someone took Jester while she was uselessly asleep. She fucking let it happen again. She let it, and that makes her more angry than she can really comprehend, but it’s not going to take her days and days to get Jester back this time. That's what she's focusing on. She’s going to find her right now.

Right now.

Right now. 

Right now?

With every corner she turns and finds more empty stone hallway, her faith wanes a little. 

Okay, she tells herself. Calm down. Think. Rash decisions rarely go well with this group. She’s getting nowhere running down random hallways in a fucking  _ maze room _ . She places both hands around the staff to steady herself, closes her eyes, and listens. 

She listens for voices, for footsteps, the clatter of loose stones getting kicked. Her breath stops in her chest as she extends her senses into gut-wrenching silence. 

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

  
  
Her head nearly slams into the staff as she’s launched out of her trance by the sound of a scream echoing through the stone halls.

It’s Jester, she knows that voice. She knows it right next to her and she knows it across a noisy room. She knows it when it’s quiet, and when it’s loud, when it’s trying to whisper because they’re supposed to be asleep but doing pretty bad at it. She knows it when it’s joyful, and mischievous, and sad, and angry. She knows it right now, and it’s so, so afraid. 

She’s running as fast as she can, now, damn the burn in her legs. She knows what direction the sound came from, and she’s heading towards it. She picks up other voices as she gets closer. 

“Shhhhhhhh!”

“Make her shut up!”

“Let go of me, let go, let go, let go, let go!” Jester shrieks again, and it sounds so close. 

She rounds the corner, expecting to see her, and instead there’s another empty hallway. An empty hallway that ends ten feet out. A fucking dead end. 

She resists the urge to scream in anger. She doesn’t want these cultists knowing she’s awake and nearby. She shoves her head against the wall instead.

There’s a few thumps, a yelp, and the sound of a body slamming into the stone. The wall she’s leaning against shakes just a little. 

Gods  _ fucking  _ damn it.

Her teeth grind and she digs her nails into the rock, dragging them down as if she was going to tear this wall down herself. Jester’s right on the other fucking side of it, and she can’t get there. 

She passed out, and let Jester get taken by some stupid fucking cultists, and she fucked up running through this stupid fucking maze, and she made one wrong turn, and now she can’t get there, she can’t help, she can’t save her, again, she failed Jester fucking  _ again _ , and she’s  _ so fucking close _ and can’t DO anything.

She looks back down the dead end hallway. Maybe she can retrace her steps, find out where she went wrong, and find her way back to Jester. 

Immediately, she knows it’s a hopeless plan. She’s not fucking Caleb, she has no idea which way she came. It’s already stupid lucky that she got this close on sound alone. All she’ll do is get herself more lost. 

If she stays here, she might overhear where they’re taking her, or how to get through the door. If the sounds of Jester whimpering and stamping the stone as she struggles against something doesn’t kill her first. 

“Please,” she whispers into the wall, screwing her eyes shut as she prays to whatever god might be listening, tears already beginning to slip out. “I can’t do this to her again, I can’t leave her. I need her to be okay. I just need to get there, please, I need to get to her. I need her.” 

When she opens her eyes, she’s looking at Jester. 

She reaches out instinctively, and smashes her hand into solid rock. She looks at her hand, and it's pressed against nothing, but she can't mistake the pain that just shot down her forearm. She splays her fingers out. She feels them brush cold stone, and watches them spread over nothing.

Tentatively, she reaches to her goggles, and pries them up. 

She's facing a wall.

She drops them back down.

She's facing Jester. 

Up. Wall. Down. Jester. Up. Wall. 

Either this is the most sense-immersive dream she's ever had, or her goggles are doing something very, very weird. She drops them back down takes a moment to refocus on her surroundings. 

Jester's legs are tied - shoddily, she notices - and her arms pinned behind her back by some freak in a cloak. There’s another shape, also in a cloak scanning a stone wall that appears to have a door shaped-ish carving on it. A third shape is standing in her peripheral vision off to the right and a bit in front.

The weird thing about it, she realizes this time around, is they’re all a bit blurry. Like looking through a paper stained transparent with oil. She sees her hand, which she can clearly feel pressing to stone, now floating up against this oil stain blurriness. The guy in her periphery is leaning with their back and one foot against it too. 

She stumbles a bit down the hall, dragging her stick behind her with one hand, and leaving the other trailing on the wall to confirm with touch that it’s still there. As she moves, Jester and the cultists seem to get further away in space. 

Definitely not a vision, then. She’s looking …  _ through _ the wall?

Dope.

She thanks whoever let this happen, and starts running again, staring through the wall and looking to see which part of the maze might connect to the hallway the cultists are in. She can still make out them talking to Jester as she moves.

_ “How do you open the door?”  _

_ “I don’t know, I really don’t, I -"  _

She gets to an intersection she thinks she’s been to before, and goes left instead of right.

_ “We’re gonna ask one more time, and it’s not gonna be as nice. How. Do you open. The door?” _

_ “There’s a key, one of my friends had it, but I don’t know where she is now, we were just the distraction group, she might’ve gone through already, I don’t know, I swear.” _

She almost turns down a corridor, but through the oil-stain she can see it's another dead end, and keeps moving.

_ “Useless, she is." _

_ “You say we just leave her here?” _

She’s so close, she thinks, this hallway looks like it connects to the one that will connect to the one that will take her to Jester. She’s almost there. She’s going to get there this time.

  
  
_ “I don’t trust her. We gotta knock her out at least.” _

_ “She kicked me really hard, even tied up. I agree.” _

She comes skidding around the corner, catching herself in a crouched position as she grins menacingly up at the people in cloaks. 

  
  
“Beau,” she hears Jester breathe out. She meets her gaze. 

“You fuckers picked the wrong group of assholes to follow in here,” she says, and launches herself at the one holding Jester. 

A well placed throat punch, and the guy seizes up, arms jerking backwards and letting Jester get her arms free to untie herself. 

She doesn’t remember much of the rest of the fight, she spends it in a blind rage. Throwing fists and elbows and knees, giving these people every bit of rage and fear and anguish she felt thinking they were going to take Jester away again. 

The last figure crumples to the ground in front of her, glowing pink for a moment before the life leaves their form and the spell has nothing to hold on to. 

She turns, and throws her arms around Jester. 

“Jes,” she says, face buried in her shoulder, and the thousand apologies implied. 

She’s not sure how long she stays like that, holding Jester as close as she can possibly get her, making sure she’s here and real and safe and loved. It’s a while. 

“Beau,” Jester says when she finally pulls back enough to get a good look at the monk. “What the fuck is going on with your goggles?”

Her eyebrow quirks up, confused. “My goggles?”

“Yeah,” Jester says, pointing. “The lenses are like, all magic-y and glow-y.”

She peels them all the way off, and sure enough, even her eyes can make out the shape in the dark. They are, in fact, emitting a pulsing sort of glow that certainly hasn’t been there before. 

“I looked through the wall,” she says.

“You WHAT?” Jester squeals, “That’s so COOL, Beau, how did you make it happen, have they always been able to do that, is it new, do you think they can do anything else now, how long does it last, can you see through clothes and stuff too?”

She laughs at the volley of questions. “No idea. I just … I couldn’t find you, and I freaked out, and then I could see through the maze.” Jester takes her hand and squeezes it, hearing that. She squeezes back. “Maybe Caleb can figure it out, once the rest of them catch up." 

As if on cue, a message bursts into her head. 

_ IS IT CLEAR ARE THE CULTISTS GONE WHERE ARE YOU YOU CAN REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE _

_ It’s fine, Veth. We’re by the door to the next room. We’ll wait here, come find us. _

“They’re coming,” she tells Jester. 

“Mhm.”

“We should sit down, we’re pretty beat.”

“Oh. Yeah.” 

They slump against a stone wall, thankful for the cold. It’s almost like an ice pack, soothing their bruises. Jester lets her head topple onto her shoulder. She strokes the blue hair a bit with one hand, the other re-entwining with Jester’s. 

“I was never gonna let them take you again,” she mutters. 

“I knew you wouldn’t,” Jester replies.

There’s not much else to say. So she stays quiet, hand in Jester’s hand and shoulder under Jester’s head. Sitting there, just, together. Until the clamor of voices and footsteps starts rounding the corner, and the rest of their party comes into view. 

She stands, pulling Jester to her feet as well. There’s more work to do in here, of course. Always more work to do. She’s glad they’re doing it together.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading, i hope you enjoyed, i know it's not Much but existing has been a lot lately and i hope this has served as a quick little balm for someone's soul. please leave a kudos or comment if you're so inclined!!
> 
> if you'd like to check out my tumblr, it's [cadykeus-clay](https://cadykeus-clay.tumblr.com)! 
> 
> (also yes, the title is from King Lear, and i do know that it was said by a character who didn't mean it, but i think it's a cute phrase so i have stolen it)


End file.
